In linguistic typology, a subject–object–verb (SOV) language is one in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, then "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence, as opposed to the actual standard English "Sam ate oranges". The label is often used for ergative languages such as Adyghe and Basque that do not have subjects but have an agent–object–verb order.

Standard Mandarin is SVO, but for simple sentences with a clear context, word order is flexible enough to allow for SOV or OSV. German and Dutch are considered SVO in conventional typology and SOV in generative grammar. For example, in German, a basic sentence such as "Ich sage etwas über Karl" ("I say something about Karl") is in SVO word order. When a noun clause marker like "dass" or "wer" (in English, "that" or "who" respectively) is used, the verb appears at the end of the sentence for the word order SOV. A possible example in SOV word order would be "Ich sage, dass Karl einen Gürtel gekauft hat." (A literal English translation would be "I say that Karl a belt bought has.") This is V2 word order.

A rare example of SOV word order in English is "I (subject) thee (object) wed (verb)" in the wedding vow "With this ring, I thee wed."[4]

SOV languages have a strong tendency to use postpositions rather than prepositions, to place auxiliary verbs after the action verb, to place genitive noun phrases before the possessed noun, to place a name before a title or honorific ("James Uncle" and "Johnson Doctor" rather than "Uncle James" and "Doctor Johnson"), and to have subordinators appear at the end of subordinate clauses. They have a weaker but significant tendency to place demonstrative adjectives before the nouns they modify. Relative clauses preceding the nouns to which they refer usually signals SOV word order, but the reverse does not hold: SOV languages feature prenominal and postnominal relative clauses roughly equally. SOV languages also seem to exhibit a tendency towards using a time–manner–place ordering of adpositional phrases.

In linguistic typology one can usefully distinguish two types of SOV language in terms of their type of marking:

dependent-marking has casemarkers to distinguish the subject and the object, which allows it to use the variant OSV word order without ambiguity. This type usually places adjectives and numerals before the nouns they modify and is exclusively suffixing without prefixes. SOV languages of this first type include Japanese and Tamil.

head-marking distinguishes subject and object by affixes on the verb rather than markers on the nouns. It also differs from the dependent-marking SOV language in using prefixes as well as suffixes, usually for tense and possession. Because adjectives in this type are much more verb-like than in dependent-marking SOV languages, they usually follow the nouns. In most SOV languages with a significant level of head-marking or verb-like adjectives, numerals and related quantifiers (like "all", "every") also follow the nouns they modify. Languages of this type include Navajo and Seri.

In practice, of course, the distinction between these two types is far from sharp. Many SOV languages are substantially double-marking and tend to exhibit properties intermediate between the two idealised types above.

Dutch is SOV combined with V2 word order. The non-finite verb (infinitive or participle) remains in final position, but the finite (i.e. inflected) verb is moved to the second position. Simple verbs look like SVO, non-finite verbs (participles, infinitives) and compound verbs follow this pattern:

German is SOV combined with V2 word order. The non-finite verb (infinitive or participle) remains in final position, but the finite (ie. inflected) verb is moved to the second position. Simple verbs look like SVO, compound verbs follow this pattern:

Sentence

Words

Er

hat

einen Apfel

gegessen

Gloss

He

has

an apple

eaten

Parts

Subject

Auxiliary

Object

Verb

Translation

He ate an apple.

The word order changes also depending on whether the phrase is a main clause or a dependent clause. In dependent clauses, the word order is always entirely SOV (cf. also Inversion):

The markers が (ga) and を (o) are, respectively, subject and object markers for the words that precede them. Technically, the sentence could be translated a number of ways ("I open a box", "It is I who open the boxes", etc.), but this does not affect the SOV analysis.

Japanese has some flexibility in word order, so an OSV is also possible. (箱を私が開けます。)

Like German and Dutch the Indo-Aryan language Kashmiri is SOV combined with V2 word order. The non-finite verb (infinitive or participle) remains in final position, but the finite (ie. inflected) part of the verb appears in second position. Simple verbs look like SVO, whereas auxiliated verbs are discontinuous and adhere to this pattern:

Sentence

کور چہے ثونٹہ کہیوان

Transcription

kuur

cha

tsũũţh

khyevaan

Gloss

girl

is

apples

eating

Parts

Subject

Auxiliary

Object

Verb

Translation

The girl is eating apples.

Since Kashmiri is a V2 language if the word tsũũţh 'apple' comes first then the subject kuur 'girl' must follow the auxiliary cha 'is': tsũũţh cha kuur khyevaan [Lit. "Apples is girl eating."]

Portuguese is a SVO language, but it has some SOV constructs, albeit they tend to sound excessively formal or bookish in Brazil (as other constructs that are more prominent in Portugal), never being used colloquially in said country – it can even be said that it is foreign to Vernacular Brazilian Portuguese, in the case of the theory that Brazil's spoken and informal written registers present a diglossia.

The negative:

Nós não os temos. Literally: We not them have. Meaning: We don't have them.

SVO form: Nós não temos eles.

When using a temporal adverb, optionally with the negative:

Nós já [não] os temos. Literally: We already [not] them have. Meaning: (Positive) We already have them. (Negative) We don't have them anymore.

Nós ainda [não] os temos. Literally: We still [not] them have. Meaning: (Positive) We still have them. (Negative) We don't have them already.

The Spanish language usually uses a subject–verb–object structure, but when an enclitic pronoun is used, this comes before the verb and the auxiliary. Sometimes, in dual-verb constructions involving the infinitive and the gerund, the enclitic pronoun can be put before both verbs, or attached to the end of the second verb.

The தான் (tān) and யை (yai) are, respectively, nominative and accusative markers for the subject and object that respectively precede them. The தான் (tān) is optional in the Tamil language. The sentence may literally be translated as 'I [who am] the box [which] open shall.'

The sentence may also be translated, although less frequently, as பெட்டியை நான் தான் திறப்பேன் (Peṭṭiyai nāṉ tāṉ tiṟappēn), or simply, பெட்டியை திறப்பேன் (Peṭṭiyai tiṟappēn) as Tamil is a null-subject language because the indicative verb at the end of the word indicates the 1st person subject. This follows the object-subject-verb (OSV) pattern.

The marker "ga" is a dative case marker for the object that precedes it. Due to flexibility in word order in Uzbek, it is possible to transform the sentence into OSV as well ("Xivaga Anvar ketdi" / "It was Anvar who went to Khiva").

^Andreas Fischer, “‘With this ring I thee wed’: The verbs to wed and to marry in the history of English.” Language History and Linguistic Modelling: A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th Birthday. Ed. Raymond Hickey and Stanislaw Puppel. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 101 (Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997), pp.467-81